SSD unbearably slow under XP

I installed XP and found the SSD speed to be unbearable. Far slower than my ASUS 701. Any ideas why? Re-installed the Linspire stuff in the meantime...

I used the Acer Chipset driver but that didnt seem to help.

 

Hmmm,

I still am in two minds whether I should go for the SSD version or not...

Now that you saying this, its made it even harder to choose !

 

Did you try disabling the pre-feteching in windows xp ?
Are you using 512mb ram or more ?

 

I have reverted back and don't have any issues under Linspire. I didnt change any settings (DMA, pre-fetch etc). And have the base 512 meg of RAM.

 

I also uninstalled Windows. What helped a lot was to set up my page file, on a SD card, I also created a ram drive Z: to store my temp internet files. Besides that there is not much you can do but disabling prefetch as King said. I have a 30GB 1.8" HDD zif 44 coming in form some country in Asia and I will replace my SSD.

 

forgot to add, i would only disable pre-fetching, if you have 1.5gb or 2gb of system ram, as it will crawl otherwise.

 

Still slow under Linux?

 

Not slow under Linux at all really....am using it now and its fine.

 

Excellent!

 

Under Linux is more and more and more and more fast than windows.
Also with only 512 mb.

 

Can I get any 1.8" zif hard drive off ebay? So I guess the drive pins are not soldered on or anything like that, just a simple swap after dissasembly?

 

I have 1,5 gb , i must disable - prefetch?

 

you should notice an improvement with the pre-feteching disabled.

 

Thank you very much

 

I have been in contact with Acer Sweden today regarding this matter and here is the reply I received:

"The slow speed, when using XP, is due to incompatible drivers, thats why we only sell Acer One and XP with a mechanical HDD. SDD and Linux works just great."

 

Disabling Prefetch, from msdn.com

EWF performance can sometimes be improved by disabling Prefetch. Prefetch is a utility that is intended to improve Windows and application startup performance by loading application data into memory before it is demanded. When using EWF with a RAM overly to protect the boot volume, Prefetch is unable to persist its data from startup to startup. Under these conditions, Prefetch will attempt compute and save new data files each time the system starts up consuming EWF resources with, potentially, no benefit.

To disable prefetch

* Update the EnablePrefetcher registry key in your run-time image:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Name: EnablePrefetcher
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0

The EnablePrefetcher key has the following values:

0 = Disabled

1 = Application launch prefetching enabled

2 = Boot prefetching enabled

3 = Application launch and boot enabled

To disable Prefetch, set the value to 0.

 

From this site, there also seems to be a difference between NTFS and FAT32. Mine was slow under NTFS...didnt try FAT32...anyone else want to try?

http://translate.google.ca/translat...pire+one+ssd&start=20&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&as_qdr=d

 

Good to hear! There may be some hope for Windows on the one after all. Has anyone tried increasing the cache? I feel that also may help.

 

The Solution to a faster SSD while using Windows is to disable the D2D Recovery function in BIOS.
For some people it helps instantly, but i had to put Windows on again to get the effect.
So you should disable it BEFORE installing Windows.

I made a Ghost image of my XP install, disabled D2D and deployed the Image back on the Aspire One.
After that the SSD reacts a lot faster, like under Linpus. So no need for special Drivers.

Using FAT32 helps too. The file System ist much simpler what results in less writing operations which are slow on the low cost SSD.
If you upgrade your RAM as i did (1,5 GB) you should also consider disabling the Pagefile and maybe putting the cache directories
on a SD Card to avoid to much writing operations.

I put that all in my Wiki (its German):

http://www.aaowiki.de

You can find a HOWTO on upgrading your RAM. But because acer says that it will void your warranty make sure what you do.
You can find the Drivers for Windows there too, getting all devices to work under Windows.
I took me some research on the net, the drivers are not official by Acer but working well.

 

How long did your windows install take the first time without d2d disabled? What about the second time with d2d disabled? I had windows on it the day I bought it but I put Linux back on it because of the slowdown.